Chapter 40 - Life is not Fair

Wind howled in Skyle’s ears as it buffeted him, bringing blinding tears blurring across his vision. All the while, he cursed himself for a fool. He had come to rely far too much on the True Sight, and had only thought of using his newly acquired Farsight when it had already been too late.

By the time Leon had finished casting his spell and conjured that brightly glowing ball of light into life around him, the warning had done little good. The only thing Skyle saw was a hazy afterimage of Leon being thrown into the air, as though by a violent impact. He hadn’t even been able to see the attacker, except for a massive shadow streaking past his vision.

Now, as the tears slowly began to dry due to the wind that brought them up in the first place, Skyle slowly craned his head up to see just what had attacked him.

It was a bird, if such a massive creature could still be considered one. It was covered in iridescent feathers that glittered strangely under the light, as though they were made of crystal. Though its shape was similar to that of an eagle, its wingspan was easily forty or fifty feet from tip to tip. A wickedly sharp beak with a cruel curve to it told him this was a bird of prey, a hunter that would tear its meat to shreds, and its formidably muscled claws could easily let it prey on most of the creatures Skyle had seen in this world so far.

In fact, as the wind roared against Skyle’s face, the small boy was momentarily lost in a daze of wonder that he hadn’t died when the beast first snatched him from the ground. Those claws would have driven through his tender flesh as easily as though it were butter, but they had been aiming for Leon. After Skyle’s shove, fueled as it was by the panic burning in his heart, sent Leon sprawling sideways, he still had enough presence of mind to twist his body away from the incoming attack.

However, the beast had simply been too fast. Its claws had still been reaching towards Leon, but missed their target and instead brushed against the edge of Leon’s sphere of protection. This seemingly near miss had instantly shredded the shield and sent Leon flying away and to relative safety.

Skyle, however, was not as fortunate. Incredibly, the instant its claws missed their intended prey, the flying beast had spread its wings wide in a dazzling display of glittering feathers. The sheer air pressure as it slowed down its descent had sent Leon flying even further away, but that maneuver had changed the trajectory of the beast’s flight enough that one of its claws scraped against Skyle’s shoulder. The razor sharp edges cut a thin line of blood, then streaked past in a near miss. In the last moment, however, it latched on to the arch of Moonshadow’s limb sticking out over the boy’s shoulder.

Had the beast not slowed down its descent, this impact alone would likely have cut Skyle’s body in half. As it was, the bowstring dug painfully across Skyle’s chest as it lifted him off his feet. The sharp blow expelled all the breath from his lungs, and his mouth opened in a silent protest as the ground grew increasingly distant with alarming speed.

It was hard to breathe as the beast kept soaring higher and higher, the great whooshing bellow of its wings drowned out only by the deafening thumping of his own heart as it stammered in fear. Skyle’s first instinct had been to fumble for the knife at his waist. Belatedly, however, he realized that he had given it to Leena. Not that it would have done him much good, in any case.

As he craned his head around, the trees below grew increasingly smaller and Skyle finally began to realize that unless the knife also sprouted wings somehow, he would be far better off just keeping it safely tucked away where it wouldn’t get him killed. As far as useless gestures of heroic defiance went, he figured, giving this giant beast a small nick in its claw would at best annoy it into loosening its grip and leaving Skyle to fall to his ignominious death. At worst, the great bird of prey might begin to feel peckish and tear his head off with that great beak before hauling Skyle to wherever place it was heading to.

It only now began to slowly dawn on Skyle that the bird had not really harmed him yet. In fact, it had already shifted its grip but still held onto Skyle by the bow, and not his body. It was almost as though it were trying to avoid further injuring him. This caused Skyle to feel trepidation in his heart, but he stopped looking for a way to free himself and instead managed to calm his mind enough that he finally began to take stock of his situation.

His shoulder felt numb but it wasn’t broken, nor had he lost mobility in it. As he shifted his weight slightly, all the while keeping a wary eye on his captor’s reaction, he finally managed to relieve some of the pressure from it and instead hung from the limbs of Moonshadow with his arms. The giant bird simply didn’t seem to care as it kept flapping its great wings in powerful motions, steadily rising higher.

Slightly more comfortable now, Skyle quietly checked his body for other injuries. Other than the shallow cut along his shoulder, he wondered at the fact that he seemed to be in one piece. Had he simply been fortunate?

As the small boy pondered on this, the steady upward surge of their momentum finally stopped. Instantly and as though by magic, the thunderous roar of the wind died down and instead it was replaced by a mysterious silence that was deafening in its own special way. Moisture tickled his face, and as Skyle raised his head the puzzled frown he wore gave way to open astonishment, his mouth gaping open while his eyes drank in the majestic sight set before him.

They were soaring past clouds, masses of white swirls that seemed solid from the distance but which became pure mist as they streaked past them in an exhilarating blur of speed. The wind, however, had stopped howling against Skyle’s face, and quickly he realized this was because the bird had stopped moving its wings. Instead, they were stretched open and the crystalline feathers fluttered in place as they caught and rode a great current of wind that gently carried them as though they were floating through an invisible river.

Now that the stinging wind was out of his eyes, Skyle could appreciate the incredible view for the very first time. Far below him, he could distinguish various landmarks he had hazily seen through the top of the trees whenever he climbed up high enough. In the distance, various peaks rose in solitary defiance against the great skies, but ultimately were dwarfed by the immensity of the heavens.

Now, Skyle towered over them.

Perhaps he would have enjoyed this moment for a while longer, had he not managed to distinguish a peculiarly shaped mountain rising higher than any other peaks. It was shaped almost like a crescent moon, as though it had been a cresting wave that had been solidified right before it crashed and broke against the sea of green spread out at its feet.

“That’s the mountain from the map!”

Skyle could still vividly recall the map Leena had shown him. Entrenched deep within the depths of the black zone, a solitary mountain had instantly attracted Skyle’s eyes. He had thought it to be an exaggeration in the map, but as he stared at the peak silhouetted against the distant skyline, Skyle couldn’t deny that it looked exactly like it had been drawn in the map.

“That means it is taking me into the Black Zone!” Skyle realized, and a potent mixture of fear and thrill ran through his veins.

“First things first, you dolt!” Kendric Farrow’s voice berated inside Skyle’s head. “Don’t forget you have this overgrown chicken to deal with first.”

A smile just barely nudged up the corners of Skyle’s lips as he pictured his father scolding him good-naturedly, even adding another of his signature knuckles to his son’s head as he impatiently urged him onward.

“He really would call it an overgrown chicken,” Skyle thought to himself. “And probably treat it as one, too.”

This added brief mental image pulsed strength into Skyle’s limbs and spread warmth within his chest. His father had never shown dismay or fear when confronted with any obstacles. As far back as Skyle could remember, Kendric Farrow had never met a challenge he could not overcome, nor a problem he could not solve. Now, it was his son’s turn to follow his example.

Skyle could only hope that he could keep Moonshadow by his side by the time they finally reached their destination. Miraculously, he could even feel a few arrows left in the quiver. If he could evade quickly enough after the claws released him, he might be able to fire off an arrow into the bird’s eyes and distract it long enough that he could lose it within the thick forest below.

It was a very long shot, but Skyle nodded to himself with grim resolve, his hand on Moonshadow tightening in a white-knuckled grip.

Beating insane odds was, after all, part of the Farrow family’s tradition.

After another handful of minutes, during which the ground streaked by beneath his feet in a dizzying blur, Skyle had finally formed several contingency plans for each action the giant bird might take towards the end of their flight. It did not change the fact that he was in a hopeless situation, but just as his father had taught him, such careful, methodical thinking helped to calm him down. That could ultimately mean the difference between life and death.

Now, as the bird finally began to descend and its speed decreased, Skyle could see a vast forest of stone pillars starkly outlined against the morning sky. These peculiar rock formations did not look to be man-made, but all the same Skyle couldn’t shake the suspicion that some divine hand had picked up rock after rock and stacked them one on top of the other until they rose to their present mind-boggling heights in an impossible display of inhuman patience.

As they drew nearer, Skyle could finally begin to take better measure of their scale, and it only left him further flummoxed. The smaller pillars of rock rose at least three to four hundred feet into the air, their bases so wide that it would take fifty men or more linking their arms to surround it. Again, these were the smaller towers. They were dwarfed by even more towering rock formations that stabbed a thousand feet or more into the sky, their sides faces of flat rock that had weathered the ages and stood in silent defiance against the ravages of time.

The bird deftly flew past many of the pillars, easily swaying back and forth to squeeze through spaces so narrow that at times even Skyle couldn’t help but gasp in fear. Still, the beast gracefully maneuvered its way past the sea of obstacles in a manner that belied its great mass. It pirouetted this way and that, barely needing to beat its great wings and instead gracefully gliding along invisible streams of wind with the ease of a fish swimming within a river.

In the beginning, Skyle’s gaze had been riveted on the rockly formations as each seemed to loom large in an inevitable collision course before another seemingly effortless maneuver saw them easily soaring past, straight towards the next inescapable stone face. However, Skyle had always been quick to adapt, and now his attention was completely focused on the bird. Specifically, Skyle was stuyding its aura with his True Sight, examining its focus and intent.

For the time being, a serene shade of blue dominated the beast’s aura, although a tinge of scarlet always seemed to be lurking in one corner. Skyle couldn’t decide if this red indicated anger or hunger, and decided that ultimately it would not matter. He would still need to react as soon as this color blossomed further and finally turned its attention to Skyle.

The moment this happened, Skyle had long decided, he would activate his Farsight. It was very taxing to activate, so he could only use it in the crucial moment when an extra moment or two of warning might end up saving his life.

It was precisely because of this single-minded focus that Skyle did not even turn his head; he did not so much as blink his eyes as the great claws that had held him for so long abruptly let go. Skyle felt as though he were floating in the air for one endless moment, then abruptly plunged down towards the ground at a terrifying speed. His hands could not react in time, as one of his contingency plans should the beast suddenly let go of him in the air had been to loop a corner of Moonshadow around one of the notches in the great bird’s fearsome talon.

Skyle belatedly began to cry out, panic finally rising up his throat as he clutched at the empty air with desperate hands. There was nothing to hold on to, nowhere else he could go but straight down. His stomach rose up into his throat as the feeling of plummeting in free fall gripped his heart and froze it cold in complete disbelief.

He simply couldn’t believe that this was how he would die, his small, boyish corpse shattered on the rocks below. He couldn’t accept that this was all he would earn for all his years of hard training under his father, for all the struggles and sacrifices he had made in order to survive this far.

It simply wasn’t fair.

“Remember, son. Life is simply not fair.”

His father’s somber words came to him at this moment, and Skyle thought he finally understood what he meant. In this one moment that seemed to stretch endlessly as he plummetted to his death, Skyle finally began to grasp at a concept that had completely escaped his realm of comprehension before.

He really could die, right here in this moment. He would die here, and for all of his training, for all his skills with the bow, the blossoming of his talent with the Solitary Star Technique, it was all useless. There was simply nothing he could do to change his fate, and he would die alone and broken in this forest of stones, the last marker of his early grave.

This realization struck him like a physical blow, and at long last Skyle thought he could understand the frantic anger and the desperate fear that had seemed to bubble up from Leon from time to time.

“Because life is not fair,” Skyle snarled to himself, as his lungs finally emptied out the last of his breath and the wordless scream finally died down, leaving only the deafening howl of the wind as he plunged ever downward.

CRACK!

The sound of impact drove icicles of pain into Skyle’s back, a series of bone-crunching cracks that terrified him as soon as the numb blankness that had blackened his mind dissipated enough that he could swim back up to full consciousness. Horror swiftly followed in the sound’s wake, both at the breathless expectation of the savage pain that would be sure to follow and the fact that he was still conscious to experience it.

Yet the pain never came.

That was not to say he didn’t hurt. As Skyle lay there, his limbs limply splayed out around him as pain wracked his entire body, he didn’t even dare to draw breath for fear of the renewed surge of agony it would bring with it. Still, there was pain, and then there was pain.

The kind of life-ending, all-encompassing pain that would swallow his world whole and leave only angry red flames licking at the ashes of his shattered sanity, that wasn’t present. Only the normal pain that is your body’s way to tell your brain that whatever you just did was a very bad idea, that was the only kind of pain Skyle could feel. In a way, this kind of pain was a good thing, because it let him know that first, he was still alive to feel it, and second, his body was at least functioning to the degree that it could still complain about it.

The stars floating around in Skyle’s vision slowly began to fade, and he squinted up to find the great, looming figure of the bird perched on top of a nearby mound of rock. It watched him with an eerie sort of intelligence Skyle wouldn’t usually attribute to regular animals. Then again, this gigantic bird was anything but a regular animal. Still, that gaze tugged at his mind, demanding his attention. Its whole body reflected this fact too, vigilant yet expectant, as though it were waiting for something.

Skyle was finally able to draw a deep, convulsive breath, and with it came a thousand needles of pain stabbing all across his body. They were surprisingly sharp, and Skyle instantly felt relieved at this fact. He had assumed that many parts of his body would have broken to the point where he would no longer feel anything but sheer agony, but instead all the nerves in Skyle’s body loudly shouted to him that they were in fact working just fine, and were very displeased with him at the moment.

As feeling slowly leaked back into his body, finally realized why he wasn’t dead yet. As his body twitched stupidly in response to his command to move, he heard further cracks below him. The sharp needles of pain coming from below finally came through clearly enough that Skyle realized he had fallen on a pile of dry twigs. He shifted his weight more vigorously now, and more of the dry twigs underneath him cracked in response.

This pile of twigs and branches breaking his fall were clearly the only reason Skyle had not pancaked himself against a rock. As Skyle threw a quick glance at his surroundings, he realized he had fallen right in the middle of an enormous pile of dry twigs and grass. The floor was sloped towards the center, and a rudimentary wall of thicker branches had been woven all around its perimeter.

“It’s a nest,” Skyle thought numbly to himself. “It brought me to its nest!”

That the next logical question that should have immediately sprung to Skyle’s mind took so long in arriving was just another indication of how dazed and confused he was by this whole ordeal. Still, eventually and after a small moment of stunned silence, he finally got there.

“Wait, why would it bring me to its nest?” Skyle wondered to himself, and his gaze once again returned to his captor. The giant bird still sat upon its perch in quiet expectation , calmly looking down at Skyle.

“Waiting,” Skyle thought, then finally the last question slowly oozed through the fumbling mess of his mind. “Hold on, waiting for what?”

This time, there was no hesitation at all, no pause to consider or weigh his options. Skyle immediately focused all the power of his will into his eyes, drawing upon the power of the Farsight.

It wracked his head with a white fog of pain, but through it Skyle was able to see the dim silhouette of the bird’s beak sinking into a small boy’s back and ripping out chunks and pieces of spinal cord, flesh and blood with equal enthusiasm.

“Wait, that’s not the same bird!”

No sooner had he finished this thought, when he ignored all the screaming muscles in his body and pulled himself to his feet with sheer power of will. His body was still not fully responsive, however, and all it managed was a pathetic roll, more of a jerking roll that flipped him over and to one side.

Still, that small victory was just enough as only an instant later, a wickedly curved beak stabbed into the twigs not two inches from Skyle’s face. The boy’s wide staring eyes swiftly followed that beak to its owner.

Standing over Skyle was a bird that stood around two meters tall, covered in brown feathers, with limbs that were far too skinny and long to properly balance its body while the wings that lay tucked to its sides looked too small to actually help it fly. Its eyes, however, were alive with a fierce hunger that seemed entirely focused on its next meal. Then it all finally made sense to Skyle.

“That’s me,” Skyle finally realized. “I’m the meal.”

Still struggling to get to his feet, or to at least manage some semblance of movement from his twitching limbs before that beak found purchase in his flesh, Skyle reflected that life really wasn’t fair at all.

The damned bird had not even had the decency to leave him his bow.